Question

what were the factors responsible for the rise of the nation states in Europe

Answer 1

will have to forgive my brevity, as I am on my phone, but this topic spans both of my flaired areas of expertise so I feel it necessary to chime in.

Strictly speaking, there are innumerable factors involved. However, one of the most important was the spreading of common culture over a geographic or political area. France and Scotland are considered to be two of the first nation states (at least in Europe). To simplify it, people within these two geo-political areas began to become more homogeneous. Language became more standard and less regional. Power began to concentrate. Enemies began to give them a rallying cry and ergo a sense of unity.

Another very important factor is military strength. The rise of the standing army and then the professsional army concentrated a lot of power with the central government. The central government could equip and organize soldiers in a way that "feudal" (quotes placed due to the debated nature of this word amongst medievalists) lords or small countries simply couldn't compete with. By the time of the Napoleonic Wars, an entire state's resources were necessary (demonztrated by the levee en masse) just to stay in the fight.

Also importantly, religion. Many of the nation states ended up defining themselves along religious lines. Of course, there remained catholics in england and protestants in France, but France was a catholic country.

It's all about identity, which is what all these factors feed into. People started seeing themselves as 'French' or 'English' rather than other forma of self identification such as along regional or religious lines. A person that was French was Catholic. Religion, in some respects, became a part of national identity, thanks in part to the Wars of Religion. However, as with the former factors that I mentioned, religion was simply one of these factors that contributed to sense of common identity linked to the state by geo-political boundaries and shared culture.

Moorkh

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Oct 8, 2013, 11:56 PM

To add to the question,

I had heard that since cannons were very effective and very costly for small feudal lords to maintain, there was a centralization of the military power as opposed to the decentralized feudal structure that existed previously. This centralization in turn lead to the rise of nation states.

Could someone comment on the veracity of this theory?

Samuel_I

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Oct 9, 2013, 4:15 AM

While there is some merit to the idea, this is a relatively minor factor. This is evident as the beginning of the transition to nation states predates the widespread use of cannons on the battlefield. Scotland, for example, was beginning to develop into what we would call a nation-state around the time of William Wallace in the mid to late 13th century, while cannons would not be in heavy use until the mid to late 14th century.

While this may be a contributing factor on the military side of things (i.e. the rise of standing/professional militaries), there were other factors at work which I discuss in my comment above which are arguably more important.

TheConfusedTroll

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Oct 9, 2013, 6:47 PM

Thanks so much for the replies. They really succeeded at clarifying that which my his